RADIUM DAYS

Jeff LyonCHICAGO TRIBUNE

Don't touch that dial. Don't, that is, if it belongs to a World War II-era flight gauge. Such instruments are very likely radioactive, having been coated with radium paint long ago by defense manufacturers to make them glow in the dark.

The toxic threat first came to light in Michigan two years ago, when state environmental officials learned restorationists were unwittingly unleashing contamination when they repaired the vintage instruments, which are prized as keepsakes by aircraft enthusiasts. Last September, state agents encountered an even more serious problem: warehouses stockpiling thousands of the old altimeters, air-speed indicators, etc., many of which have begun to leak radiation.

The danger is not great unless one is around large numbers of gauges, or the gauges are broken, which allows bits of the deteriorating radium paint to escape in the form of a fine dust, which can be inhaled or ingested. Once in the body, radium lodges in bones and can cause cancer-a fact learned the hard way by workers who used to paint radium on wristwatch dials.

"To date, we've found no one adversely affected by the plane instruments," says David Minnaar of Michigan's division of radiological health. "But the potential is there."